It’s time to dispel the myths surrounding Football players’ intellect, both academically and otherwise, as the 2024–25 football season is in its infancy. This is adding the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) element to the equation. We’re here to give you the list of football players with the highest IQ. To learn more about the same, scroll down. However, before that, let’s explain how traditional IQ and the so-called “athlete IQ” relate.
Related Articles
Photo: instagram.com/3gerardpique
What’s Athlete IQ?
Stereotypical traits of athletes are frequently exploited by the media to create an image of an athlete who’s socially and physically well-endowed, yet comparatively dimwitted and uneducated. When compared to celebrities from other industries, such as entertainment, athletes have never ranked high in terms of brain capacity; yet it has to be stressed that some actors, for example, truly excelled when taking IQ tests – some of those celebrities had extremely high IQs when test scores were added up, and they can be compared to the most renowned scientists of mankind. So, athletes are called “dumb jocks” by the media, or at least they used to. A dumb jock is someone who’s extremely athletic but less intelligent than average—exactly what their name suggests. That’s how football players are thought of. Many of them, however, proved they don’t belong to this notion.
In sports, IQ has an intriguing air of mystery. What does it mean to state that an athlete has a high “sports IQ” or an athlete IQ, if you prefer? We surmise that tactical game knowledge, whereas tactic is labeled as the most important bucket of athletic performance, originates from hundreds of hours of game experience, watching game tapes and learning from them, paying focus on coaches and instructors, and applying that to play; even though there may be a genetic link to these things. A football player who consistently chooses the best course of action in a particular circumstance is said to possess a “high football IQ” by fans. For lack of a better phrase, we believe that IQ is used here to describe “sports-related smarts” because we’re aware that IQ has very little bearing on an individual’s ability to make an instantaneous judgment based just on what they observe.
Are Sports IQ and Traditional IQ (Intelligence in General) Relative to One Another?
According to traditional psychology and neuropsychology, intelligence quotient, or IQ, refers to a person’s general capacity for “reasoning skills” that develop over the course of seconds to minutes and allow them to carefully consider and keep track of their judgments. Testing concepts like arithmetic, vocabulary, assembling blocks to match a pattern, memory for pictures or designs, matching patterns in general, mental rotation of objects, very basic responses, or matching symbols with numbers as rapidly as you can over tens of seconds (often referred to as “processing speed”) and completing mazes are all part of the classic intelligence measuring (from tests like Stanford-Binet and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to RBANS, Wide Range Intelligence Test, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, and so on).
It’s not surprising that IQ tests used in the sports industry for proper player scouting – NFL introduced IQ tests since the 2018 draft as part of the prospects’ evaluation – like Wonderlic and AIQ, correlate with traditional IQ because they continue to depend on classical IQ methods and theories, like mazes, word lists, picture matching, and reasoning answers to questions. These metrics have little application to the quickness and complexity of playmaking and making choices in a split second in the sports arena, even though they are valuable for understanding a person’s capacity to function in the environment and daily life (and possibly comprehend and assimilate things like the playbook). Consequently, there’s less evidence from studies to support the notion that an individual’s quick decision-making processes are related to their intelligence or IQ score.
What role does conventional IQ have in sports? An athlete’s ability to pick up the playbook quickly and comprehend intricate concepts and systems more readily is probably enhanced by a high IQ. It doesn’t follow that athletes with lower IQs can’t pick up abstract ideas or the playbook; it just can take them longer to process or cause them to lose their stability over time.
Now, let’s get back to five football players who have the highest IQ…
# 5 Petr Čech
IQ: 140
Educational qualification: Master’s Degree in Business Administration
This former goalkeeper, who has one of the highest IQs among football players, isn’t your normal goalkeeper.
The Czech guy is the owner of multiple trophies in football. Along with currently playing semi-professional ice hockey as a goalie with Belfast Giants in the highest league of the United Kingdom, Čech has won four Premier League titles, five FA cups, a UEFA Europa League, and, as a cherry on top of the cake, the UEFA Champions League in 2012; the most of which he has won with Chelsea. He was an Arsenal player from 2015 to 2019.
In total, the Premier League’s Hall of Famer speaks seven languages. In addition, Čech earned an MBA in Business Administration in 2022 from the Longford International College in Ireland.
# 4 Juan Mata
IQ: 142
Educational qualification: Degree in Sports Sciences, Degree in Marketing, and Degree in Business in Entertainment, Media, and Sports
Juan Mata, one of the most adored attacking midfielders in football history, is also among the sport’s sharpest players. The 36-year-old veteran, who won the Champions League and other major trophies, such as the FIFA World Cup with Spain in 2010 and the UEFA European Championship with them two years later, is currently a free agent after spending the previous season playing for the Japanese J.League club Vissel Kobe. However, he has played for elite teams like Chelsea and Manchester United.
Mata graduated from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (INEF en la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) with a Degree in Sports Sciences and the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid (Universidad Camilo José Cela) with a Degree in Marketing. This June, Mata earned a Degree in Business in Entertainment, Media, and Sports from the prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
# 3 Mario Balotelli
IQ: 147
Educational qualification: High school graduate
Mario Balotelli, a player with one of the highest IQs, is also known as “Super Mario” in the world of football. The Italian striker is currently on the Turkish Süper Lig team Adana Demirspor. Due to his fiery temper, which caused him to argue with coaches, teammates, and fans, and receive multiple suspensions, the former “Azzurri” national team member has changed 11 clubs during his professional career, with varying degrees of success, wasting his talent, which was marked as exceptional when he was in youth categories.
Unlike other football players on our list, Balotelli never showed a desire to pursue education, therefore in 2010, he graduated with a 60/100 mark in accounting from the private Milan Institute (Istituto Milano), ending his learning path.
# 2 Frank Lampard
IQ: 150
Educational qualification: Degree in Latin
One of Chelsea’s most well-known stars (three Premier Leagues, four FA Cups, one Europa League, one Champions League, etc.), Frank Lampard, was the manager of this team in the previous season (also between 2019 and 2021 when he had some huge unbeaten runs and table-toppings in the Premier League) and is currently unemployed. He’s among the English best midfielders of all time, which helped him get inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2021.
Lampard attended the Brentwood School in Essex, England, and finished with a Degree in Latin. He’s among the top football players in England who hold a degree. Lampard is one of the 0.1% of persons on Earth with his extraordinary IQ score. No wonder he’s on our list.
# 1 Gerard Piqué
IQ: 170
Educational qualification: Degree in Business Economics and Degree in Business in Entertainment, Media, and Sports
One of the rare players who has ever won the Champions League with two different clubs is Gerard Piqué. The Spaniard, who’s regarded as one of the best defenders of this generation and usually emphasizes his Catalan heritage above all, was crucial to his national team’s titles at the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. Up until recently, he was a player with FC Barcelona. Given that his grandpa was a longtime Barcelona vice president, it appears that success runs in his family (nine Spanish La Liga titles, three Champions League titles, three FIFA Club World Cups, etc.).
In addition, he attended the esteemed private business school ESADE Business School (Escola Superior d’Administració i Direcció d’Empreses) in Barcelona to study Business Economics. Just like Mata, Piqué got his Degree in Business in Entertainment, Media, and Sports from Harvard.
Believe it or not, Piqué’s IQ score is higher than the one of Albert Einstein, who was 160 according to historical records (he never took an IQ test), making him the most intelligent football player in the world, whether retired or active.
For the End
Many people have the misconception that above-average intelligent folks, so-called “nerds”, are lousy athletes. It’s actually the other way around.
High-IQ individuals typically have very healthy brains. They’ll have a more functional neurological system, a well-functioning brain, and effective communication between the various areas of the brain. This implies that physical coordination and the capacity to pick up new skills, especially those related to sports, are correlated with IQ. Additionally, those with higher IQs could perform better in sports’ strategic elements. Of course, there are a lot of examples to the contrary. People who are very smart but not good athletes, and vice versa. Finding examples to contradict a correlation doesn’t disprove it.
Anyway, these five football players on our list prove that athletes can be nerds and that there’s nothing wrong with it.
